THE BI-WEEKLY DISPATCH The conversations, posts, and questions worth paying attention to this week. House hunts. A crowd sourced list of many trusted tradespersons in the province. Small rituals that mean you've become one of us. Two questions kept surfacing underneath all of it. Where do I look. And once I get there, who do I know. Recent Blog Posts Nova Scotia Tax Sales: What the YouTube Videos Don't Tell You Tax sales sound like the back door everyone else missed. They're real, but they...
13 days ago • 2 min read
When you retire after thirty years, people throw you a party. Nobody asks how it feels to wake up on Monday with nowhere to be. When you finish school, everyone talks about what comes next. Nobody sits with you in the grief of a world that is closing. When you get sober, people celebrate your strength. Nobody acknowledges the self you had to leave behind to get there. When something ends, people focus on what comes next. Nobody makes room for what you're letting go. When you become a parent,...
20 days ago • 4 min read
THE BI-WEEKLY DISPATCH The conversations, posts, and questions worth paying attention to this week. This week the group did two things at once. It threw open its arms for a newcomer's big landing, and it sat with a private grief someone almost didn't have the nerve to post. Both are in the recap below. If you only read one thing, read the line near the bottom about carrying more than one home in your heart. Two blog posts went out this cycle too, and both land right on time. One is the bug...
24 days ago • 4 min read
There is a room in the municipality of Clare where local decisions get made. Bylaws. Budgets. The ordinary business of a community. On the walls there are paintings of the deportation. I have stood in that room and I want you to know what it feels like. The year is 2026 and above the heads of the people conducting the business of this place is the thing that was done to their ancestors. The boats. The families torn apart. The land seized. The long walk back, thousands of miles on foot, by...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
THE WEEKLY DISPATCH The conversations, posts, and questions worth paying attention to this week. Taxes, land, vehicles, the cost of almost everything. The practical questions kept coming over the past two weeks, the way they always do. The biggest thread of the period was about none of that. It was about wanting a friend. Recent Blog Posts What Buying Raw Land In Nova Scotia Actually Costs That $25,000 parcel is real. What the price leaves out is the well, the septic, the driveway, the power...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
The question came to the group. The one a lot of us hold quietly. The one we feel a little ashamed to ask, as if it is some kind of failure, or a feeling we are not allowed to have after making such a big leap. Has anyone moved here and now wants to go back to Ontario? Close to two hundred replies came in. When I go back to Ontario, I don't recognize it. I miss the familiarity of old friendships and places. I miss where I grew up. I also know it is not the same place I grew up anymore and...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
THE WEEKLY DISPATCH The conversations, posts, and questions worth paying attention to this week. Community supporter · Sponsored Sam + Lottie Aldarwish Carpenter · South West NS Full gut renovations move in sequence: structural, rough-ins, inspections, insulation, drywall, finishes. Most buyers budget for finishes and underestimate everything above them. Budget 20–25% contingency - and more timeline than feels necessary. Beam & Birch buys neglected homes, restores them, and lists them and...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
My community keeps pulling me back into the real, raw emotional stuff. They want to say it out loud. They want to feel like it's allowed. So here it is: you are allowed to love Nova Scotia and grieve what you left behind at the same time. You are allowed to be someone who made the right choice and still feel the cost of it. Two things can be true, and this community has space for all of them. Being in the garden this spring has me thinking about transplanting. Some plants take to new soil...
2 months ago • 4 min read
THE WEEKLY DISPATCH Top posts and things of interest from this week Hi, You've been getting The Landing from me. Stories from people who chose Nova Scotia. This is the other one. The Dispatch goes out on alternating weeks. It's a straightforward update: what's been happening in the group, and the most recent posts from the blog. That's it. This week I asked the group what's been harder than expected. One hundred people answered. The thread is still going. Recent articles The Sight Unseen...
2 months ago • 1 min read